Ranking

The day I went to visit Duan Yujing on set, he openly skipped work to meet a popular young actress at a hotel.

When the intimate photos reached me, everyone on set watched my expression with nervous care.

I hardly cared. My attention had already been captured by a young man in the corner who looked somewhat like Duan Yujing.

Lunch was being served, and the cook gave him an extra lion’s-head meatball.

His eyes curved as he smiled with unguarded delight.

I studied him. “Who is he?”

After my boyfriend dumped me, he planned to go to Tsinghua University with the beautiful top student and live happily ever after.

But when the National College Entrance Examination ended, I was the only student from our school admitted to Tsinghua, and I took the stage as the student representative.

The two of them could only watch from below.

In the third year of my secret marriage to a top celebrity, I visited him on set and found his assistant hand-washing his underwear.

He was playing video games.

When I tried to fold his clothes, his assistant shoved me aside. “Let me handle his clothes, sis. You don’t know how he likes them. He can’t get by without me.”

The suds on her hands splashed across my brand-new Chanel.

My celebrity husband explained from the sidelines, “Li always does it. Just let her.”

All at once, I said, “Let’s get a divorce.”

He froze.

His assistant had to fight harder to suppress her grin than the recoil on an AK.

I had no choice.

I was pregnant, and this four-person marriage was getting rather crowded.

Both the Crown Prince and the Grand General wished to marry me.

I hated the intrigue of the Eastern Palace, so I chose the Grand General who had sworn that I would be the only woman in his life.

Yet on our wedding night, his female deputy lured him out of the bridal chamber with a single flask of wine.

Still dressed in my wedding robes, I listened to their moans through the wall for half the night.

When the rain became a downpour, I threw on a cloak and knocked on the Eastern Palace gate under cover of darkness.

At the Crown Prince’s astonished expression, I gave a bitter smile.

“Your Highness.”

“Tell me—if a woman suddenly thinks of another man on her own wedding night…”

“Isn’t that ridiculous?”

When I asked my husband of one year to end our contract marriage, he agreed without hesitation.

That same night, I found an anonymous post from a man desperate to win back the wife who wanted to divorce him.

The details were suspiciously familiar, so I created a fake account as a love guru and offered to coach him through the final month.

To my astonishment, the brilliant and untouchable CEO I had married turned out to be a shy, hopeless romantic who had loved me since high school.

As every absurd piece of advice brings us closer, I must decide whether the marriage I planned to leave is the love story I never knew I wanted.

Born into wealth but sold into a brothel by her opium-addicted father, Zhao Xiaochan remakes herself as Tang Xiaowan and refuses to let a violent age decide her worth.

Beside a rough warlord and later a principled reporter, she survives betrayal, occupation, and impossible love while risking everything to shelter other women from the same fate.

Across decades of war and upheaval, the jade cicada at her throat becomes the last witness to a life lived fiercely, proudly, and on her own terms.

Artifact-conservation student Lin Fu wakes in the body of the lowest-ranking maid in the imperial harem, where saving a priceless cup brings her to the attention of Emperor Qin Zhi.

Protected by the kind Empress Shen Chenxiang, she finds purpose restoring paintings, porcelain, and other damaged treasures inside a palace that destroys people far more easily than objects.

After tragedy takes her benefactor, Lin Fu is pulled into a dangerous struggle among the Emperor, the Shen clan, and the Yan clan.

To avenge the dead and protect the children entrusted to her, she must survive as the Emperor’s favored consort without allowing the harem to turn her into another weapon.

From shattered porcelain to broken friendships, every relic she repairs reveals a history of love, betrayal, and the things no pair of clever hands can ever restore.

By the year 3026, society’s race to the bottom had accelerated beyond control.

Pregnancy ruined a woman’s career prospects, so I had my uterus removed to improve my chances of finding work.

HR rejected me anyway.

The reason was simple.

“I’m sorry, but you have a twelve-hour gap in your employment history. That’s far too long.”

Madam Lin is choosing a bedchamber maid for her son.

All the pretty maids are eager to be picked.

Holding my fire poker, I ask Granny Shi, “Can I roast a potato?”

Granny Shi says, “Can you please show a little sense?”

Bad news: I was sold into the Wu household, worked myself to the bone for three or four years, and just when life finally started looking up, the whole family had its property confiscated.

Good news: the Wus were pardoned, the family was released, and even the master escaped execution.

Bad news: they were exiled to Ningguta.

Good news: Ningguta was where I came from.

On Qixi Festival, the Chinese Valentine’s Day, my husband turned out to have another woman.

He not only paid me two hundred thousand yuan a month, but also asked me to look after her during her pregnancy.

What could I possibly say?

Tears of joy streamed helplessly down my face.

I packed overnight and moved straight into their little love nest.

Before stepping through the door, I raised my price at the last minute. “Three hundred thousand.”

Xu Chen gritted his teeth. “Deal.”

My best friend stumbled into a suicide game, and it shattered her worldview.

Talk one person into killing themselves, and you were guaranteed at least ten thousand yuan.

Sell “suicide merchandise,” and you earned a twenty-percent cut.

The merchandise included death-scene photos, bloodstained clothes, ongoing reports on the victim’s family, and more.

My righteous best friend worked tirelessly for a month…

and managed to talk eight of the game’s chat groups into disbanding.

The people behind it lost their minds. “Wasn’t she diagnosed as an extremely rare antisocial personality during testing? How did she turn into a saint?”

Had it ever occurred to them that she wasn’t the one who took the test?

I was.

And as someone with that exceedingly rare antisocial personality, I preferred making my own rules.

I was Sword Venerable Jiang Tingxue’s most devoted anti-fan.

I spent nearly a century slandering him from the shadows, yet he never once noticed me.

Then his cultivation was destroyed overnight, and his enemies threw him into a brothel to be humiliated.

I went there especially to laugh at him.

But when I saw the sickly beauty in a blood-soaked robe, blind eyes veiled in white, the words that came out of my mouth were not the ones I had planned.

“Hey, Jiang Tingxue, want to come with me?”

“…I suppose I could treat you a little better.”

And so, in the hundredth year of my futile obsession with Jiang Tingxue, he became the beautiful prize I kept all to myself.

I had profaned the divine after all.

The aloof, ascetic monk from the altar now stood inside my red-draped bedchamber, tearing off his prayer beads as he clasped my ankle, his Adam’s apple shifting.

“Little Highness, this humble monk has broken his vows.”

I stayed beside Xie Chen from the days when he had nothing until he became a wealthy man, only to discover his affair seven days before our wedding.

He expected me to forgive him, protect his company, and leave our marriage with nothing, but I had built his success with my own hands and knew exactly how to take my life back.

While his first love fought to become Mrs. Xie, I divorced him, sold my shares at a premium, and founded a company of my own.

By the time their so-called true love collapsed under greed, debt, and betrayal, I had already learned that the best time to call off a bad marriage is the moment you see it clearly.

After wandering the mortal world for more than six hundred years, I hear that a once-in-a-century sword prodigy has appeared.

The young man has also found a dragon that sounds remarkably like the one I lost long ago.

Cultivators from across the realm flock to the mountain, some to seek the dragon and the Dao, others to kill and seize treasure.

I am different.

After a long, dusty journey to the Sword Sect, all I want is to set up a little stall at the foot of the mountain and sell wontons.

Mother always said that if a woman wanted to stay radiant, she had to know how to nourish herself.

Ginseng and deer antler were useless.

What truly nourished a woman was a young, vigorous man.

Following that regimen, she still looked sixteen well into her forties.

Having grown up under her influence, I understood the secret by the time I turned eighteen.

Scholars were lean, generals solid, actors charming.

I had sampled them all.

The one I found most intoxicating was Shen Zhaoye.

I lavished mountains of gold and silver on him, yet never so much as put an arm around his waist.

Then he came to take his leave, claiming he had found a more powerful patron.

Furious, I followed him by lantern light into Springwater Lane.

When I kicked open the door, he was kneeling beside a couch, offering tea to someone.

The beauty reclining there lifted her eyes lazily.

My lantern went out, and my soul nearly fled with the flame.

“Mother?! You’re sleeping with my man?”

Lady Wang and I went into labor on the same day.

She bore a son, while I bore a daughter.

When I awoke, lines of floating comments suddenly appeared in the air.

[The supporting woman is going to die of rage when she finds out the emperor switched her son for some stray girl.]

[With a family like hers, do you think the emperor would ever have risked letting her get pregnant if it weren’t for our precious Lulu?]

[The emperor is willing to corrupt the imperial bloodline for Lulu. The god of pure love has fallen!]

The next moment, Pei Yangxi carried the baby girl to my bedside.

“Ah Ci, look how adorable our child is.”

When the hundredth prodigy of Sword One Sect abandons the Way of Heartlessness for love, its exasperated master orders the entire sect to embrace the Carefree Way instead.

Fourth disciple Ying Ruge expects a delightfully chaotic new life filled with matchmaking schemes, sect rivalries, and the silent devotion of her second senior brother, Meng Yu.

But when Demon-Suppressing Mountain breaks open, their carefree creed is tested by a battle that forces every disciple to decide what freedom, duty, and love are worth.

Nan Tao, an enslaved maid in a wealthy household, discovers that the baby-shaped ginseng fruit her mistress orders buried is alive.

As the fruit reveals the truth behind the household’s miracle heir, Nan Tao uncovers a cycle of trafficking, forced pregnancy, and women transformed into trees harvested for profit.

With a holy monk and his three disciples, she must uproot the dead tree that holds her soul—even though destroying it will erase her forever.

A dark feminist reimagining of a mythic delicacy, Ginseng Fruit turns supernatural horror into a haunting story of inherited violence, motherhood, and liberation.

After I accidentally fell into the water at six, I became the silliest girl in all Jiangnan.

And yet, I was also the luckiest, for I had a husband who was wonderful in every way.

From what I wore to what I ate, he personally took care of everything for me.

Then one day, I wanted a second bowl of iced cream at dinner.

When he refused, my cousin, who had never liked my husband, questioned me.

“A-Fu, don’t you think your husband bosses you around too much?”

My husband answered coldly on my behalf.

“She doesn’t.”

My cousin tried again.

“Your cousin never bosses you around like that, so doesn’t that mean I’m still the better one?”

My husband frowned, then calmly wiped the corner of my mouth.

“Good A-Fu, did you hear that?”

“Your cousin is trying to drive a wedge between us.”

“He’s absolutely rotten.”

My family had three daughters, each lovelier than the last.

When we came of marriageable age, suitors nearly wore our threshold smooth.

Even the Emperor decided to interfere.

He insisted that one of us marry the great general, Xie Yuan.

Father and Mother could do nothing but sigh.

My two elder sisters exchanged uneasy looks, so I rose with righteous resolve.

“What’s there to worry about? Marrying a general would be glorious, and I might even get to ride a great stallion!”

“If neither of you will marry him, I will.”

Later, Xie Yuan pinned me in his arms and coaxed me again and again:

“Are you shirking again, Mianmian? Why won’t you ride your great stallion tonight?”

Noble Consort Qin was a peerless beauty, alluring enough to make the emperor cast aside his first wife and depose his legitimate son.

With tender eyes, Noble Consort Qin murmured, “His Majesty and I were joined as husband and wife in our youth. We are as devoted as a pair of mandarin ducks…”

Emperor Gaozu, inveterate male chauvinist: “Lady Qin is a mere concubine. How could she possibly have been joined to Us in our youth?”

“Throw this insolent wretch into the cold palace at once-and bring Us five hundred jin of memorials!”

◆ Male-chauvinist emperors with a single-minded devotion to a rich nation and a powerful army ◆

◆ We have no need of love. We want GDP! ◆

Notes:

1. This is a male-lead story in a fictional setting, and an unconventional quick-transmigration novel told through feudal monarchs who enter romance stories.

2. The emperors are written as typical rulers of feudal eras. They care only about raising GDP and have no time for romance. And yes, they truly are male chauvinists. Emphasis very much intended.

3. This is a wish-fulfillment story hostile to the pampered-concubine trope, with face-slapping and scum getting what they deserve. The emperors’ values do not represent the author’s. Please do not derail the discussion.

4. The direction and pace of the plot are entirely the author’s decision, and the author reserves the final right of interpretation.

I was a spoiled princess with an elder sister who came from another world.

With her indulgence, I escaped marriage and raised horses on my border fief while she remained at court and shouldered every responsibility.

Then one day, she vanished.

Everyone thought her era was over.

They did not expect the princess they called useless to ride back to the capital overnight and reveal the strength she had hidden for years.

If my sister was gone, how was I supposed to enjoy being useless in peace?

Shen Yuze and her nemesis Jiang Xing have spent nine years fighting, dating, breaking up, and reconciling at the command of a ruthless Couples System.

On the eve of their wedding, they discover that Zhao Fei’er—the supposed villainess wrecking their relationship—is trapped by a system of her own.

With three fortunes and their freedom on the line, the unwilling actors join forces to stage one last spectacular melodrama and finally beat the systems at their own game.

I transmigrated into the daughter of a mistress.

When I arrived, my mistress mother was sobbing her heart out.

“What happened?” I asked.

She said, “The Qi family sent word: either they cancel Bai You’s engagement, or they replace her with Bai Zhuo.”

I rubbed my forehead. “And that’s worth crying over?”

My mother stared at me. “How is it not? Haven’t you studied this hard so you can enter a good university and become a better match for the Qi family’s young master? I lost to that woman my whole life. Must my daughter lose to hers too?”

The noble consort who had been cherished all her life said on her deathbed that she regretted everything.

“If there is a next life, I would gladly trade places with you. I would be a lowly palace maid, endure until I turned twenty-five, then leave the palace and be free.”

“The emperor’s favor, all this hollow wealth and splendor – whoever wants it can have it.”

Tears ran down her face as she said that all she wanted was a love that was pure and true.

Just before she closed her eyes, she clutched my hand.

“Cherry, will you do it? Will you trade places with me?”

Weeping, I pressed my lips to her ear.

“This servant is willing.”

I had spent a lifetime cleaning up her messes.

I was so tired.

I had the sharpest tongue in all of Chang’an.

It was so vicious that I was still unmarried at twenty.

When the dauntless Zhao family finally came to propose, I resolved to mend my ways, retire my lethal mouth, and become a quiet, lovely bride.

On our wedding night, my husband – famed for being as gentle and refined as jade – lifted my veil and rubbed his hands together in excitement.

“I hear that when my lady curses someone out, they have to rewrite their entire family tree before dawn?”

I hurried to reassure him. “Don’t worry, Husband. I’ve turned over a new leaf.”

Zhao Yuanxiu waved both hands, so anxious that he began to stammer.

“No, no, no.”

“From now on, my lady, please be even more ruthless. Spare no one.”

Me: What?

The Minister of the Court of Judicial Review withstood enormous pressure, uncovered the true culprit, and cleared my father’s name, sparing our entire family from exile to Lingnan.

My father was immeasurably grateful and swore he would give his life to repay the minister’s kindness.

After a little polite hesitation, Lord Fu said, “My son has reached marriageable age, and I hear the vice minister’s household has several fine young ladies.”

My father understood.

Switched at birth to repay her father’s debt, Li Yuanxi endures ten brutal years at the northern frontier while another girl grows up as a noble heiress.

When she returns to the capital, her family sends her to die in a political marriage and deceives her betrothed, Fu Qingchuan, into marrying the favored daughter instead.

After Yuanxi’s death, Qingchuan turns his grief into a patient revenge, using love, ambition, and an old imperial conspiracy to destroy everyone who betrayed her.

Yet even when justice is done, the ghost beside him knows that nothing can cross the distance between the living and the dead.

Before Qin Ruyu transferred to my school, I was the smartest and prettiest girl there.

After she arrived, I never came first in anything again.

Even when I confessed to Fu Shaonian, he turned me down because he liked Qin Ruyu.

So I hated her to death.

Years later, someone brought her up in front of me.

“What a shame. Why did you two break up back then?”

Me: ???

I’m straight too, okay!

[Two Male Leads + Infinite Flow + Horror Games + Power Fantasy + Rules Horror + Two Powerhouses + Irresistible Protagonist + Unhinged Beauty]

When Xiao Huai wakes up, he finds himself trapped in a bizarre game. Everyone around him is terrified out of their minds. He alone is bored enough to fall asleep.

He remembers nothing of his origins or his past. The only thing he knows is his name.

Those chosen are forced to take part in horror games, while a host of gods watch from beyond. Through the system, the gods can leave messages for the players and bestow blessings upon them.

Unfortunately, these gods are nothing like the ones of legend. They would much rather feast their eyes on bloodshed, violence, and the ugliest side of human nature.

To them, the countless horror games are merely a way to pass the time.

Xiao Huai’s arrival soon makes his livestream the most entertaining one of all.

Keywords: Two Powerhouses, Unhinged, Instances, Games, Power Fantasy

A max-level, irresistibly charming bottom vs. an unhinged, theatrical god top

Lu Yuanshi × Xiao Huai (bottom)

The top appears in the second instance.

The synopsis doesn’t do it justice; the story itself is much better! ~₍˄·͈༝·͈˄*₎◞ ̑̑

Xu Qiangyuan has spent her life defying the deadly fate only she can see.

When her once-devoted husband returns from war protecting a pregnant widow and chooses the woman’s lies over his wife, Qiangyuan decides she will not merely end her marriage—she will replace the emperor who refuses to grant the divorce.

With the Grand Princess and the formidable Xu clan at her side, Lady Rakshasa sets out to expose a spy, crush a tyrant, and build a realm where no woman must kneel.

After dying a hero, I used the merit I had earned in life to make a wager with the King of Hell.

I would be turned into seven different animals, and if I could get my family to recognize me every time, I would be allowed to return to life.

If I failed, I would stay in the underworld and work there without complaint.

The first animal I became was a giant southern cockroach.

I had lived with the Shen family for eighteen years when they suddenly told me I was a fake heiress.

The real heiress wept and begged my adoptive parents to throw me out because the mere sight of me upset her.

My biological mother grabbed my hand and ran, terrified that my adoptive parents might try to stop us.

After all, we both knew the apocalypse was coming.

My mother had farmland, a house, a little grocery store, and even a storage dimension in the countryside—not a pile of useless numbers in a bank account.

I married Prince Shu in my elder sister’s place, figuring that if he discovered the truth, the worst that could happen was a fight between us.

Little did I know that Prince Shu was not only blind, but also determined to pamper the “wife” he had brought home.

Now he is knocking outside my door. “Little Qiao, we have been married for half a month. May I sleep in the bed tonight?”

Er… How am I supposed to tell him that his bride is actually his male, cross-dressed nemesis?

I was the legitimate daughter of an illustrious clan, mild by nature and untouched by worldly desire, and I should have become the sacred monk’s disciple at the imperial temple, spending my life before an ancient Buddha and a solitary lamp.

For the sake of prestige, however, my parents insisted on marrying me to the eldest son of a ducal household—a well-matched libertine notorious for his debauchery.

Before I left, the monk heaved a long sigh and gave me a fragment of the Buddha’s bone, warning me to wear it at all times and never let it leave my body.

After I entered the Zhu household, my husband first brought home a concubine, then took a proper wife, but I did not mind, and my husband’s aunt praised me for knowing my place.

When my husband molested a colleague’s female relative and the Censorate denounced him, I did not mind, and my husband’s aunt praised my sweet temper.

My sister-in-law kept control of the household accounts, claiming that someone as pure as I was should never sully herself with the stink of money.

My mother-in-law demanded that I wait upon her morning and night and handle every task myself, so that I might become a model noblewoman.

At an imperial banquet, the Grand Empress Dowager took a fancy to the Buddha’s bone at my breast and demanded it for herself.

My mother-in-law hurried to tear it from my neck and offered it up with both hands, fawning shamelessly.

At last, I smiled in deliverance.

Twenty years, you damned bald donkey—let us see how you plan to keep the evil inside me chained now.

After years away from the capital, I returned to find a female study attendant at my fiancé’s side.

I stormed over to demand an explanation, only to drink a cup of drugged tea by mistake.

When I opened my eyes again, I was pinning my fiancé’s stern, old-fashioned, rule-bound elder brother beneath me, his body covered in scandalous red marks.

Our eyes met.

Silence filled the room.

I forced a smile and searched for something—anything—to ease the mortifying tension.

Without a word, he rose, found a length of white silk, and expressionlessly began to—

My eyes nearly popped out of my head.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll take responsibility!”

“I said I’ll take responsibility!”

When the war ended, the army prostitutes did everything they could to persuade soldiers to take them home, because the alternative was being sold to a brothel.

By the time the dark-skinned, taciturn centurion came looking for me, only an old dying woman and I remained in the camp.

She laughed and asked why I was still waiting for Young General Pei when he was about to marry a princess in a blaze of glory.

That night, Pei Qingfeng pinned me to the bed and ordered me to wait for him at the house he had bought outside the city.

Not once did he ask about the man who had visited me that day.

He seemed certain I would never leave with anyone else.

What he did not know was that I had already accepted the centurion named Zheng Yuan.

On the day Pei Qingfeng married his princess, Zheng Yuan and I would be married too.

On the day my only daughter was born, the Marchioness of Zhenbei gave birth to a son in the Hall of Mental Cultivation.

At dawn, Shen Chizhou brought me her child and exchanged him for mine.

When I caught him, he merely raised his eyes and said, “The child born of Wan and me must be raised in the palace.”

Song Wan was the great love he had lost in his youth.

Now that she had borne him a child, he meant to make amends to mother and son at any cost.

The cost was my daughter becoming the young lady of the Marquis of Zhenbei’s household.

She went from an exalted imperial princess to the daughter of a mere court official.

After a long silence, I neither wept nor protested.

Instead, I lifted my face and smiled in approval.

“As it should be.”

After all, a child ought to be raised beside her real father.